Electricity is pretty expensive here in CA if you go over your alloted basic service kilowatt hours. I had a friend who had an electric golf cart who complained about how high his elec. bill was due to charging his golf cart. I wonder how much more people are paying per KW for the plug-in feature on the new Prius models and other brand plug-ins? Will the utility companies give a reduced KW hour rate? Anyone know?

It's depends on how close you are to the next higher tier rate. If you are on the bottom rate with room to spare then it's not big deal. The Prius plug-in has a rather small battery so your electricity use should be low compared to a Leaf or Volt. If you are at the highest rate or close to it then an electric vehicle may be more expensive to operate than a non- plugin Prius.

Electricity is pretty expensive here in CA if you go over your alloted basic service kilowatt hours. I had a friend who had an electric golf cart who complained about how high his elec. bill was due to charging his golf cart. I wonder how much more people are paying per KW for the plug-in feature on the new Prius models and other brand plug-ins? Will the utility companies give a reduced KW hour rate? Anyone know?

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Some of them have a specific EV rate. Some of them have time-of-use rates. GIYF.

But, remember that if the PHV battery has 3.5kWh usable then charging once per day the Prius PHV would only use at most 118kWh per month. It would be less of an issue than a longer range EV.

It won't matter though. For many Californians expensive electricity will mean they'll not plug in at home and consider the extra cost of the car worth it for the HOV lane sticker.

Electricity is pretty expensive here in CA if you go over your alloted basic service kilowatt hours. I had a friend who had an electric golf cart who complained about how high his elec. bill was due to charging his golf cart. I wonder how much more people are paying per KW for the plug-in feature on the new Prius models and other brand plug-ins? Will the utility companies give a reduced KW hour rate? Anyone know?

For example, energy charges in the summer may be only five cents per kilowatt-hour with no demand charge between 9:30 p.m. and 8:30 a.m., but increase to nine cents per kilowatt-hour with a demand charge of $10 per kilowatt between noon and 6:00 p.m.

A few things to realize here. First, if you're on regular plan and have CARE discount, DON'T SWITCH YOUR PLAN!!!!!. With CARE program you only pay $.085/KWH for Tier1 and $.095/KWH for Tier 2,3,4,5. E9A plan places your whole house on discounted rate for EV owners while E9B requires PG&E to add a second meter for your electric car. I made the mistake of switching to E9A and lost the CARE discount. To PG&E, CARE is still on my account but CARE does not apply the discount. I switched at the end of January. When I got my bill, I found out that there's no CARE discount for E9 rates. After calling PG&E many many times to switch back to my regular plan they finally did because they failed to inform me that CARE does not apply to E9 rates and once you switched, you're locked to that plan for 12 billing cycles. Give you an idea what the difference in cost was, My August bill (July usage) was $320 for 1600kwh.
They finally switched me back to my old plan on July28th (my billing cycle ends) after 6 months of E9A rate and rebilled Jan 28th to July 28th. I had about $130 credit as oppose to $320 bill that I had to pay for August bill.
Second, my 4KW Enginer takes about 140-150kwh per month to charge. It's not Enough to make the switch.
Third, Toyota's 3.5kw of usable electricity is not enough to last you the whole day. If you think you can wait til 12AM to charge you're sadly mistaken. I thought I could too but once that SOC hits 20% and it's only 11AM, you'll want to plug it in and charge regardless what time it is.

Correct me if I am wrong, I think the Leaf can be programmed inside the vehicle to begin charging at a designated time, will the Prius PHV has such a program?

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Don't know. Maybe we'll find out September 12th, 15th, or maybe we'll have more questions. We are a whiny group here but that doesn't seem like a huge problem to me since timing outlets are fairly common with pools and hot tubs as well.

I live in North Texas and pay 9.5 cents/kWh. So, it will cost me 9.5 x 3.5 = 33.25 cents to charge a 3.5kWh battery.
The reveal of the Production Prius Plug-In is on Sept 13, at Media Day, two days before the Frankfurt Auto Show opens. -- Just nine days away.

Electricity is pretty expensive here in CA if you go over your alloted basic service kilowatt hours. I had a friend who had an electric golf cart who complained about how high his elec. bill was due to charging his golf cart. I wonder how much more people are paying per KW for the plug-in feature on the new Prius models and other brand plug-ins? Will the utility companies give a reduced KW hour rate? Anyone know?

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I got news for you ... a cheesy little golf cart charger doesn't use 1/3 the juice of a typical central AC unit. If your friend has central AC, a 15 year old SEER 6 unit can easily run you $7/day during California summers ... whereas that little 36 volt (probably) 12 amp golf cart charger may run you $2/day if you charge for 10 - 12 hours. It's the same low powered charger we have for our electric boat. No - it's more likely your friend's electric bill got expensive because he left a refrigerator door open, or the AC was set too low. Have your friend WALK the golf course one month ... and use no AC one month. Then come back and tell us which cost more.